Franklin Graham calls on America to ‘turn back’ to God 25 years after 9/11: ‘We still need His help today’
Developed over time first seen 2 months ago
Rev. Franklin Graham, president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritan's Purse, has urged Americans to "turn back" to God as the nation marks 25 years since the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks. In a Fox News Digital interview, Graham recalled the "tremendous amount of pain" he witnessed at Ground Zero and said his prayer is that the country will rediscover the reliance on faith seen in the attacks' aftermath, when churches filled and people gathered publicly to pray. He also cited his late father Billy Graham's 2001 address at Washington National Cathedral, in which the evangelist told the nation it was engaged in "a new kind of warfare" and needed "the help of the Spirit of God" — a message Franklin Graham said remains just as necessary today.
The appeal coincides with a new 30-minute BGEA programme, "A Day That Changed Our Lives Forever," hosted by Graham, which features survivors describing how the attacks reshaped their faith. Among them is Genelle Guzman-McMillan, the last person pulled alive from the World Trade Center rubble after 27 hours trapped beneath the debris, who says she cried out to God and was comforted by a mysterious figure named Paul whom she believes was an angel before rescuers reached her. The special also recounts the story of Sujo John, who worked in the North Tower while his pregnant wife was in the South Tower, and who feared she had died before receiving a phone call confirming she had survived.
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In short
- Franklin Graham urges Americans to "turn back" to God 25 years after 9/11.
- Cites father Billy Graham's 2001 call for divine help amid "new" warfare.
- New BGEA film features survivors' faith stories, including Guzman-McMillan's rescue.
How this story developed
- 1 month ago Rev.
- 2 months ago Rev. Franklin Graham has urged Americans to "turn back" to God as the United States marks 25 years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, telling Fox News Digital that the nation still needs divine help just as it did in the immediate aftermath of the atrocity.
- 2 months ago Rev. Franklin Graham, president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritan's Purse, has urged Americans to "turn back" to God as the nation marks 25 years since the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks.
- 2 months ago Rev.
- 2 months ago Rev. Franklin Graham, president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritan's Purse, is urging Americans to renew their faith in God as the country marks the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Steelman: both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Advocates of Graham's message argue that national tragedies expose the limits of purely secular or material responses, and that the surge in prayer, church attendance and communal solidarity after 9/11 reflected a genuine and valuable human need for shared moral and spiritual grounding. They contend that personal testimonies like those of Genelle Guzman-McMillan and Sujo John are sincere expressions of how faith helped people endure trauma, and that public figures calling the nation back to religious values are offering comfort, moral clarity and social cohesion rather than imposing dogma. For them, invoking faith in remembrance of 9/11 honours a tradition, exemplified by Billy Graham's own 2001 address, of turning to shared spiritual resources in times of national grief.
The case against
Others would argue that America is a religiously diverse and constitutionally secular nation, and that framing a shared national tragedy primarily through one evangelical Christian lens risks sidelining the experiences and beliefs of Jews, Muslims, other faith communities and the non-religious who also suffered and responded on 9/11. They may contend that attributing a survivor's rescue to an angelic encounter, while a deeply held personal conviction, should not be presented as evidence for a broader call to national religious revival, since such claims are unverifiable and can feel exclusionary to those who found meaning through other means, such as civic solidarity, secular support networks or different faith traditions. From this perspective, using anniversary commemorations to promote a specific religious agenda risks conflating collective mourning with evangelism.
Explained simply
Franklin Graham, son of the late evangelist Billy Graham, leads two major US Christian organisations: the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and the relief charity Samaritan's Purse. He has long been a prominent, sometimes controversial, voice in American evangelical circles, known for public statements linking national events to calls for religious faith.
His comments come as the United States approaches the 25th anniversary of the September 11 2001 attacks, in which hijacked planes were used to strike the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 people. The attacks were followed by a notable surge in church attendance and public displays of faith across America, a period Graham often references.
His father, Billy Graham, was one of the most influential Christian preachers of the 20th century and delivered a widely remembered address at Washington National Cathedral shortly after the 2001 attacks, comforting a grieving nation. Franklin Graham's remarks build on that legacy, tying the anniversary to his broader, ongoing message about the role of religious faith in American public life.
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